A Representative in New York submitted a bill, H. R. 5741, for compulsory service for everyone 18-42. I read the bill, flipped out a little, and posted it on my page, for comment.

And boy, did I get comment. But really not what I was expecting.

See, I have these two friends. And they could not be more polar opposite if they tried. I have a suspicion that they’re actually matter and anti-matter.

The one, is a fundamentalist, Baptist, Tea Partier, conservative midwife from Alabama. I’ll call her T1. The other is a liberal atheist gay man from California. I’ll call him T2.

Just from me saying that, everyone has them in a bucket already, right? And pretty much, yeah, that is as they’d appear. And before the conversation about HR 5741 went too far, my two friends were at each other’s throats.

It was really, really sad. Not because they were tussling, but because they started off antagonistic.

I know them both, although neither of them super well. I happen to disagree with both of them on quite a few things. But I know that they both are super-intelligent, and super-thoughtful. I know that they are both passionate, and they both think that the world needs some industrial fixing.

T1 has no idea why I value T2. I think people like T1 and I really really need people like T2 around, because they have the time to do the in-depth research on things that T1 and I, because we are mothers, do not have. I was proud of myself for reading the damn bill the whole way through before posting it, and T2 was mad because I hadn’t done a thorough background search nor read the Wikipedia entry. He has no idea that I was merely checking Facebook while I was processing eight loads of laundry because Kestrel had a stomach flu, and thinks less of me for failing to do full research on something. He has absolutely no idea what my time pressure in a day is like, and part of why I value him so hugely is because he does have the time, and does the research, and comes up with info that I would never have found on my own. He can complete an entire thought without being interrupted, precisely because he has made different decisions in life than I have about parenting, and without his input, I would be more ignorant of some things in this world.

T2 has no idea why I value T1. His focus on the world does not encompass women’s issues, and therefore he doesn’t know that T1’s work on biblically-induced misogyny is groundbreaking, thorough, and has the ability to change the world as we know it. He also doesn’t know that T1 is the sort of person given to fits of above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty kindness to complete strangers, and that she is absolutely committed to creating a better world through protecting the mother-child bond at birth.

I think they are both capable of making the world a better place, in very very different ways. And I am heartbroken that we live in a world where the labels one hangs on oneself and the labels the world hangs on you create division, where respect for alternate endeavor might be a superior response.

I don’t care if we disagree on some stuff. I don’t need you to agree with me, or with each other. I just really wish that it was our instinct to focus more on similarities than on differences, and that establishing common ground was a social convention rather than a perceived weakness.

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More and more, the kids all show up at my boat. My kids ask if they can go play on the other boat, and are told that no, they have to be quiet, or no, someone’s busy, or no, someone cleaned, or or or… every excuse to avoid the noise and chaos of children in a small space.

One by one, they end up over here. We’re the boat with the legos. The one where there’s food and you can even have some, between meals. We’re the boat with the computer playing Dora and Scooby-Doo and Batman and no one even is annoyed that they’re not “educational”. We’re the boat with the DS games. We’re the boat where the answer is yes.

Saying “yes” is the #1 hardest and most rewarding zen exercise in parenting. We’re trained to think that we must restrict, we must confine, we must control. Always, we must control.

Nonsense. Say yes. Yes yes yes yes. It becomes easier with practice. Chocolate almond milk with breakfast? Yes. Drop everything and watch clouds? Yes. Make a fort with the newly-washed laundry? Yes. Yes yes yes. Try it.

Yes.

The world will not end. Your chores will either get done, or they will wait for you. As Missy said, in one of the most brilliant blog posts ever,

I know that, one day, this time will be over and it’s that knowledge that is forcing me to take a new look at time, to take advantage of what we have instead of postponing life until everything is perfect. I should know by now that “perfect” is not a reasonable goal, that if I put a project off until my house is clean, we’ll never get to the project; if I put off swimming with my kids until my stomach is flat again, I’ll never be able to teach them how to jump waves. And I know that, in the end, my hesitation is going to be remembered a lot more clearly than how I look in my bathing suit.

Say yes. Try it. Just a small one, right now. Then let it get bigger.

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He wanted a cake. Not three cakes like I made his brother, or two like his sister had. Just one. Vanilla, please. Nothing fancy, just cake. He wanted sushi. Just the regular order; he didn’t want, say four whole Lion King rolls to himself. No. Just the usual; a few pieces of Lion King, a few California Rolls, a couple of avocado maki. Nothing fancy, just sushi.

He’d been a little more expansive about his gift requirements, even going so far as to surf the web a bit and make a gift list up (who says unschoolers never practice spelling; have you seen the names of some of the Bionicles? Which of course, led us back to Maori, and how Bionicles stole basically a whole cultural thing from them, and what he remembers of our trip to New Zealand before Kestrel was born, and on, and on…). But I digress…

My pal Steven has a son, Josh, who is significantly older than my boys. He’s stretched his wings thoroughly, and is moving on with his life, as they say, and has given up childish things. Including six crates of Legos. Now, when Steven told me this, I pictured crates, you know, like the small tote, kinda one cubic foot kind of crate. And I said, when Steven asked me, that yes, the boys would be utterly delighted with a new haul of Legos, and of course we’d take them.

A few days before Rowan’s birthday, Steven came up with the loot. And he meant six crates. Not the small ones. The huge ones. I frantically phoned my neighbor, Beverly, and asked her to store them for me until Rowan’s birthday. And then it took Steven and I two trips from his car to her boat, because we couldn’t really fit more than four crates in a dock cart. Crates. Did I mention, the big ones??? Oish.

Slightly panicky and wondering what I’d done (since, y’know, the goal is to get stuff *off* the boat), I asked Jason if he’d bring the crates over after Rowan went to bed the night before his birthday, and provided a blanket for him to cover them up. My plan was to leave them in the cockpit, and let Rowan just whip the blanket off them.

So on the morning of his birthday, that’s what happened.

I love the look on Kestrel’s face here.

Yes, my love, these are all for you. But share with your siblings, OK?

At first, they were too overwhelmed to just, y’know, open the boxes. They just peered through the plastic.

As the day progressed, they started digging in, and pulling out creations and creations-in-progress that Josh had left behind. It struck me, kind of bittersweetly, that there’s a sort of connection between generations, and that some other kid is going to pick up where mine left off with these same Legos. It made me wish that Josh was still of an age to come hang out with my little guys, and reminds me that my boys should pass these along while they can still pass the joy they get out of them along too.

From time to time, for the rest of the day, Rowan would just get this dreamy look on his face, and kind of revel in the wealth.

Some of the pieces were from kits he recognized, or had wanted in the past.

This gives a better sense of why the kid might have gone into overwhelm a few times. I know I did.

This is our whole cockpit, basically (with our hanging lettuce garden for backdrop…)

Aurora was slightly nervous that she was going to get lost in the blocks. Normally, she’s right in there in the middle of whatever her brothers are doing, but this was too much even for her. She mostly hung out on the sidelines and asked me about cake.

Rowan kept vacillating between sorting the Legos, and playing with them. He wanted to know what he had, but kept being amazed instead of orderly. Which is just how it should be.

He stopped playing long enough to eat some cake and sushi, but mostly, just kept playing. For the next few days. Straight. Without breaks. Eventually, he realized that he didn’t just have a ton of legos, he also had an Opportunity(tm). So now, he’s sorting with a vengeance, and is going to take the parts he doesn’t need or want down to the Toy-Go-Round, and sell them for credit on other things he wants. But even that is a lesson; when he got insanely overwhelmed by the task (and who wouldn’t?), we talked about setting a goal, of “I will sort half a crate a day” and that being totally more manageable than “I will sort this mountain,” so he’s learning about organization too. He’s learning to think critically about the parts as they pass through his hands. He’s hopping online to figure out what parts are and what they might go to, and I am blown away by his ability to look at a given piece, and know exactly what thing it is associated with.

I am also blown away at what he’s creating. A few weeks ago, after Rowan used the word “bored” (one of my only extreme hot-button words), Jason and I had a chat with him about what else Legos could build, besides endless variations on a theme of Bionicle Warriors. We talked about the Art of the Brick (which he had gone to see just last summer). Oddly, even though he was fascinated, he hadn’t realized he could do that himself. But now, facing six crates of raw materials, plus the crate and a half of Legos he had before (we measured them), possibilities are opening up, and his creations are spanning wider realms of imagination. I’m documenting them, and will be posting them here from time to time.

This is a kind of insane wealth and opportunity that kids rarely receive. This is largesse unimaginable, and sufficient words of gratitude to Steven and his family elude me. I have rewritten this paragraph four times, and each time I just sort of babble more than the last. So I’ll just say, thank you. From the heart.

And as for storage? He and Kestrel have agreed to put their mattresses on top of the crates, and sleep on them. At least for now.

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She was, as he, his father, and his sister all said, “a kick in the pants.” I’d met her a few times over the years, at the spectacular bridgebuilding event known as “Walter’s Birthday Party,” where he’d invite a bunch of random people to his sister’s home, and you’d find yourself sitting on a couch somewhere, sipping excellent whisky and having deep conversation with people you never really had the time to talk to otherwise. It was at one of Walter’s birthdays that I first really got to know Dave Ponkey.

It was also at one of Walter’s birthdays that while his father was out in the living room playing bagpipes (for real!), his mom was in the kitchen, drawing portraits for people. She was a fabulous artist, and enjoyed sitting down and really studying the panoply of people who showed up to wish her son well.

Jason and I sat for a portrait. After working on it for about fifteen minutes, Liz crinkled up her face, ripped the paper off the pad, and started over. Another ten minutes, she did it again. One last try, and with a wry grin she handed it over. And the finished work, just like the three before it… showed two people who looked very much like she and Walter, and not so much like Jason and I. “I can’t get it,” she laughed. “This is just how it’s going to have to be.” I have that portrait still.

Because of Walter, and who he is, and how his family works, his mother died peacefully, at home. She died surrounded by love, on familiar ground.

Walter has been fighting hard for months to make that happen, because just like home birth in this culture, home death does not happen without someone taking a whole lot of care, a whole lot of time, and fighting a whole lot of bureaucratic insanity. As one of Walt’s friends said, “I don’t want to imagine what they’d have suffered without your vigilance.”

Walter was able to basically drop his whole life here on the West coast, fly back east to his childhood home on Staten Island, and take on the role of caregiver to both his mother and his father, who during this time is also experiencing some serious health issues, not to mention the emotional issues he’s facing. And the more time he was out there, the more, in his phone calls to me, I heard what I jokingly call “New York Walter” take over. You see, Walt on this coast is a sweet, funny, gentle guy who sees the humor in the world first, and says “coffee” funny. Walt on that coast is a hard, fast, decisive, brutal guy who does not put up with one ounce of bullshit from anyone.

And that’s good. That’s survival. Or in this case, that’s him, standing up against the weight of a medical establishment that is not designed to gently care for people at the end of their days.

In a note to friends and family, right before his mom passed, Walt said:

It began at the end of February when my Mother was taken ill, and taken to the hospital. She has only just made it home for good on July 7th. In between was an odyssey of red tape, misinformation, opportunists and obfuscation. As I deal with my parents health woes, one thing is clear to me: we (Americans) do not have a “health care system” we have isolated events that occasionally overlap.

A few years ago my Mother’s “primary care physician” diagnosed her with Parkinson’s. I’m still not sure what led to this beyond a tremor in her hands. He put her on meds that are known to cause hallucinations and paranoid ideation to “slow the progress of the disease.” The meds of course did not, since she was diagnosed with “Lewy Body Dementia” in the hospital in March. They took her off of the meds which were doing her no good, and perhaps harm. This is not a rant against the doctor; it is merely par for the course. One of the many reasonable decisions made at the time with unforeseen consequences you must deal with. She had sudden difficulties walking so we wanted her discharged to rehabilitation, but her health care provider said no. So we appealed as is our right, and the social workers at the hospital asked “why would you (the family) do this?”

I asked the doctor assigned to oversee her care (as her primary care physician doesn’t deal with hospitals) for information. Each time he evaded my answers or my presence either by telling me my questions were not specific enough, or missing our agreed-upon meetings. Most meetings with family in hospitals are held in the halls anyway, strangely the only time you DON’T have to sign a HIPPA agreement to get things done. My questions, of course, grew more specific and technical while being put through this process. When asked to explain what was going on with her care, and what could I expect, he said merely “Lewy Body Dementia”. Not having spent years memorizing medical terms I politely asked him to explain it to me. He responded by saying “What do you want from me?” I wanted an explanation, like you see on TV where the doc takes the family into another room and explains what will happen, why, what they can expect, and what possible options there are for treatment. That moment doesn’t exist in real hospitals where technical gear is left in the stark white halls by the door of whomever it was used upon last. Doctors are distant and uninformed. Nurses know what’s going on, but because of legal issues, must find a disinterested doctor to ask permission to do what only they know needs to be done because all the MD’s are busy doing split shifts at different hospitals, clinics and private practices at any given hour of the day.

It was there in the hospital beneath the scorching florescent light that I had an epiphany. As I sat on the relentless tile watching the nurses and doctors handle their business, as they talked to each other, and most importantly, as they ignored people asking for clarifications, and sometimes each other, I realized I already do their job. Not just could, but do. Working a busy restaurant, or a fancy restaurant is the same thing as working in a hospital. The differences were not structural, but superficial. I recognized the person who was working exhausted and stealing opportunities to rest. I recognized the new manager you had to ask but who didn’t know jack. I recognized the “lower level” workers who were going through the motions & picking up a paycheck, their skill not in their job, but in reducing resistance. I could find only two differences between what they do & what I do. 1) They chose to memorize more useless trivia with hyper-specific uses than I have and 2) the worst thing that can happen if I fuck up is that my customers have a bad night.

However, the prioritizing, juggling, processing, stalling, timing, customer stroking . . . All the same. There was more too. The next time you are in a hospital, watch for it, and you will see. Especially the shortcuts taken for their own convenience.

What this made clear was that an advocate was needed at all times. Without a squeaky wheel, nothing would get done. Hell, I let up a minute when she was being discharged and they sent her home dehydrated. Which led to a new hospital stay, better waiters, and the OK for her to go for physical rehabilitation. This means over a month in hospitals. So in the first week at the rehabilitation center – a fancy way of saying old age homes that need extra revenue & already have physical therapists on staff – there was a complication. Dad was hospitalized twice. Both 911 calls. Gastro-intestinal bleed masquerading as heart attack & sudden afibrillation. That was a hell-of-a-commute-week between hounding doctors for answers for Dad & driving up Hylan Blvd a few blocks to make sure Mom was getting proper nutrition & the physical therapy she was promised. This is at the best “home” on Staten Island too.

Then they tricked me into a naso-gastric tube saying it would only (by definition) be temporary & after I OK’d it they refused to remove it because she wasn’t eating enough, even with the independent worker we hired to feed her. It’s ok she quit w/o notice when she found out we were taking Mom home & she’d have to work full time — the job we hired her for!

Then there was my own trip to the emergency room followed by a car accident leaving us w/o wheels (& me with mad body aches!)

There were battles fought & won with the home employees (they want to put a gastric tube in you surgically at the drop of a hat). They used a doctor who doesn’t return phone calls & moves slower than winter molasses on anything that needs to be done. Anytime you ask for more information about difficult decisions they suddenly throw at you (once again, in hallways) the answer is “we can’t make that decision for you.”

WHAT?! Damn right you won’t make decisions for me, but you damn well better be able to tell me what my choices are!! There are a hundred other minor battles fought & won everyday. As they come up. Every day.

Little by little Mom’s health declined. She went from walking rehabilitation to “She can’t walk. Work range of motion” and then to “she talked for the first time in a week today, I guess the new formula we’re feeding her is better. She recognizes me!”

Now she is in the dining room she designed & decorated, in a hospital bed. She looks lazily to one side, when we’re lucky enough to have her eyes open. We live for every belch or clever quip. She uses her eyebrows quite expressively as well.

The tube is finally removed and if she doesn’t eat enough to stay awake, she will wither and slip away in a week or two. I have to be careful as I feed her that she doesn’t choke, since she wasn’t allowed any solid food with the tube in for the past 8 or more weeks.

Getting your Father away from denial & toward helping with the funeral plan. That’s a whole new level of hard. 63 years together. 50 of them in this house. July 13th is when he asked her to marry him. It’s the day the tube was removed.

As we sit around with Mom, under the shady branches of the side patio, bricks slick with black summer mold in between rain storms that do not “break” the heat, she asks us not to leave her. And occasionally for a Rob Roy.

Back in February, I blogged about Keith Olbermann, who did basically the same thing as Walt has been doing. Over the last few years, I’ve blogged about the Bear, his interactions with the medical system, and his long battle to die.

Here’s what we all have in common. We all thought we could trust the medical system to care for our loved ones. And through fire and pain and madness, we discovered we could not. Then, we discovered through agonizing, daily practice, that we could very well do it ourselves. And finally, we discovered the grace involved in being there, at the end.

This realization would not have been surprising just three generations ago. Before WWII, people died at home, without the system intervening at all. You were ill, you went home, you died there, unmolested, surrounded by people who cared more for you than for lawsuits and standards of “care”.

In our world, people like Walter, who devote months of their lives to caring for their parents at the end, are unusual. Most people have this insane treadmill matrix of a life that does not allow the space to honor the end for the people we love. And that is a bigger tragedy than they know. I think that a measure of success, as a human being, is your ability to hold the space for the people who have held it for you over your life. What grace is there in making the mortgage but having your loved one die alone in a hospital because you were “too busy” for them?

Another friend of ours posted this:

For eleven years I have regretted it, regretted
that I did not do what I wanted to do as I sat there those four hours watching her die.
I wanted to crawl in among the machinery and hold her in my arms,
knowing the elementary, leftover bit of her mind
would dimly recognize it was me carrying her to where she was going.
~Jack Gilbert.

It is time, and beyond time, to straighten out our priorities.

It’s one thing to live a busy life. It is another thing entirely to clear the slate to allow real life to happen, as it’s meant to, at both the beginning and the end. Walter has done something utterly heroic, and while he may face some financial consequence for it, I know that I, and the rest of his family and friends, are enlarged by his example, and are all ready to catch him, however he needs.

And when we are called to, may we all have the strength, the courage, the integrity, to follow his example.

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Me? I think that Well, Yeah is the best. Period. Hands down, far and away, the best family blog ever.

Valarie has ten kids. And they are some of the most well-adjusted, decent people you’d ever want to meet. And so are their spouses, their friends, their relationships. I have gotten pretty much all the best parenting advice ever from Valarie. I figure, if she can manage what she has, I want to emulate her.

The thing that finally pushed me over the edge into jumping up and shouting “Valarie is the best freaking parent EVER!!” was a recent blog of hers, where she talks about her teenage children’s teenage friends as “Little Jay brought Sumi and Larry along, and Maria had Heather, and they are all pleasant people, agreeable, nice kids. It was very peaceful.” In an older post, she refers to her son’s prom date as “Her dress is so beautiful. I do really like this kid. She is so funny and kind.”

OK, back the truck up. Precisely how often do you hear a mother of teenagers talk about her kids’ friends that way? And check out this quote on her daughters-in-law: “They are kind, funny, generous, astute… I didn’t realize until some of my kids were grown how central kindness is to every single thing, but it is.”

And really, I think that it’s Valarie’s persistence about how fundamentally decent everyone is that helps keep everyone rising to meet her expectations. You don’t often run into people who are doing as much as she is, who don’t complain, who in fact revel, in the craziness that is a big family. Usually there’s some martyrdom and drama involved, some sense that the madness outweighs the solid comfort. But for her, what matters is how everyone is connected. I blogged about her advice to me on that front here.

Valarie is the person who gave me the best comeback line ever, for when people ask me about why I have so many kids (yes, here in California, three is a lot of kids). I say what Valarie says,”Well… we like them.” Stops people in their tracks; they aren’t used to hearing that. We are supposed to be confrontational with, and annoyed by, our kids. The idea that we enjoy them is downright revolutionary and radical. I love it.

I also am routinely inspired by how she discusses her marriage. I can’t possibly recreate the beauty of the original post here, so I’m gonna make you go read it yourself. In fact, I’ve  not linked to the other quoted posts on purpose, so you’ll have to go read her blog for yourself.

I tell Val how inspirational she’s been to me, and she laughs. I tell her what a gem she is, and she just kind of shrugs. But every week, she puts out this blog that just radiates warmth and compassion and love and humor, and I bask in it. And you should too. Go click over and check it out.

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But try telling it to my mommy heart.

My mommy heart wants to hold him close and keep him safe and not let him out of my sight. My mommy heart wants to be right there with him at all times. Which is of course unreasonable and unfair. He needs to grow, and to grow, he needs space.

I started letting Rowan head up to get the mail without me about six months ago. He is thrilled with the freedom. The first few times, I was a wreck, and not without reason. That particular predator, after approaching two other kids in this marina who were totally prepared and strong in their reaction, moved on.

Was I terrified about letting Rowan go? Yes. And should the actions of one predator fence my child in for life? Absolutely not. You have to live strong. But that doesn’t mean you live dumb. I can see the entire route from our boat to the marina office from the boat, and so I watched him with binocs the whole way.

Since that encounter with the predator, we’ve had a lot of talks. We have done a lot of playacting. We have done a ton of prepping. And in August, we’re taking Kidpower classes.

A few weeks ago, I asked him to go on a day that Jason was home, and Jason flipped out. He had no idea we’d been doing this, and was really concerned about the danger of it. Having had the practice, I hardly think about it, other than to pop out and scan the route before I ask him to go. He thinks I’m letting him off the hook. I know I’m letting him loose into a place I’ve pre-approved. But this was Jason’s first time letting Rowan stretch; he watched the whole time, with the binocs. And I laughed. Letting go is a matter of practice.

Today, Rowan turns eight, and one of his birthday gifts is a marina gate key of his own. It’s largely symbolic; I don’t expect to turn him loose without my supervision any time soon. But I want him to know that he’s getting to the point where that’s not so unreasonable. It’s a signal to us both that I see his maturity coming, and that I’m working as hard to prepare for it and accept it with grace, as he is working hard to grow into it.

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